Development

The first generation of Soviet missile tanks started in 1956 when V.A. Malyshev was ordered by Nikita Khrushchev to instill a "new thinking" into the weapons design bureaus. Part of this "new thinking" was the development of missile tanks including the IT-1 firing the Drakon missile and the Taifun armed Obiekt 297. However these early tank designs were failures. A purely missile armed tank had a 300 meter deadzone around it, where it could not engage targets - also the size of the early missiles limited the number carried. Hybrid designs compromised both main gun firepower and missile carrying capacity.

These limitations led to the development of a hybrid system, where the missile was fired through the barrel of the tanks main cannon. The first generation of this concept was the Obiekt 775 tank, armed with a 125&nbsp;mm smoothbore gun that could fire high explosive unguided rockets, or a radio command guided projectile. The guided projectile was called Rubin (Ruby) and the unguided projectile called Bur (Drill). The tank could carry 24 Rubin missiles and 48 Bur rockets. The project was a failure, as the Rubins shaped charge warhead was not effective enough, and there were concerns that the...Read More